


Promise Me a Place

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, Developing Friendships, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 09:16:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5738050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras shows affection in the only way he knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promise Me a Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weisbrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weisbrot/gifts).



> prompt: "I just want Grantaire to feel valued."

Only the smallest changes let Grantaire know that something has shifted in his friendship with Enjolras. There were no declarations, no midnight confessions, no heartfelt appreciations of thanks complete with clasped hands and sincere gazes. He would almost think that nothing had changed. 

But something had.

He notices it first when someone approaches Enjolras on the street. Grantaire is walking through the dim evening to the Musain with the blond man at his side, ready for another meeting of a vague revolutionary nature, where Enjolras will be passionate and Grantaire will be drunk. They do not speak but the silence is a comfortable one; Grantaire, not yet in his cups, does not need to fill the space with his rambling words. He is content enough to pace at Enjolras’s side, and possessive enough to feel affronted when a man hails them from across the street.

“Enjolras!” The stranger calls. Enjolras turns and then stops with his arms crossed over his chest, impassive and waiting, as the other man crosses over to them. Grantaire stops as well to hesitate by Enjolras’s side.

“I’m glad to have caught you,” the newcomer says with a cheery smile. His hair is untamed but his waistcoat is immaculate, a detail which reminds Grantaire of Courfeyrac.

“Pretot,” Enjolras says as he inclines his head in greeting. “I trust that you are well?”

“As well as one can be, I suppose.” The man’s eyes flicker to Grantaire before he speaks again with his voice lowered. “I meant to gather an opinion from you on the… lecture we both recently attended.”

Grantaire very nearly turns away from the conversation at this transparent reveal of the business of insurrection. He isn’t a fool; he can read anarchy in the lines of this man’s face and the cut of his clothes. But Enjolras catches his attention anew by stating, “There’s no need for secrecy here. Hardly anyone else is on the street, so I would have you speak plainly.” He has not uncrossed his arms.

The stranger still hesitates, and his eyes dart sideways again. “This is my friend, Grantaire,” Enjolras adds smoothly. His eyebrows leave no room for argument, so Pretot shifts and gets on with it.

Grantaire does check out of the conversation at that, because his mind is fixating in a way that can be a strength and a downfall. _My friend, Grantaire._ It shouldn’t feel significant but it does, because he has long since memorized the particular cadence of Enjolras’s oft-repeated phrase: ‘this is Grantaire.’ An afterthought and a fleeting one at that.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Enjolras is saying. “To pay such an amount for gunpowder would be a crime.” Pretot hastens to agree with him.

Grantaire does not know if the blond man has ever called him “friend.” It sparks a new feeling in his sodden chest, but not an uncomfortable one. It stays with him when they leave Pretot– “Find a better price or we will have to look elsewhere”– and make their way to the Musain. Grantaire opens the door, and Enjolras walks into the light with a nod of thanks, and the warmth on Grantaire’s face seems to have little to do with escaping the evening air.

The meeting is fast-paced and full of Enjolras’s favorite flavor of treason. Grantaire drinks because the wine is sweet and his friends are loud and to join their passion is to be drunk on it, but he finds himself cheerful enough to forego an amount of wine that could numb him to emotion.

“Paris,” Enjolras says, as one would say God. “Paris will be on our side.” The students clamor in approval.

Grantaire and Enjolras do not speak more or less than has become usual, but Grantaire is careful to listen to Enjolras’s words and inflections. “I will only trust this task to Feuilly,” Enjolras says. “I think Courfeyrac would have the best success here. Joly, Bossuet, between the pair of you the Courgourde will feel pressure to give me an answer.”

Grantaire is developing a theory about the blond; he is slow to show emotion through action, but lets it drip like valuable honey from his words. _My friend._

The exchange is repeated here and there in the months that follow, as Enjolras plunges down into the fevered heart of France and more men are rallied to his cause. Grantaire is not his right hand (Combeferre) nor his left (Courfeyrac), but he still finds himself frequently following the blond into darkened bars and poorly-disguised meetings. The nature of revolution breeds distrust among its components, but Enjolras is always quick to vouch for his friends, including Grantaire. “My friend, Grantaire.” It burns bright in his memory each time.

(“This is my friend, Grantaire. Have you been in touch with Pretot?”)

(“My friend, Grantaire. We have come to listen to your views for an evening.”)

(“This is Grantaire, another of my friends. Prouvaire said you had something of interest for me?”)

The men they meet are often amused by the juxtaposition of the two: Enjolras, a student; Grantaire, also a student, but less pronounced. One eternally sober, one frequently drunk. When they are surrounded by the rest of their friends the differences are not as striking, due to Joly and Bossuet’s good humor and Courfeyrac’s kindness being set against Enjolras’s polite severity. The nine of them, apart, are notable. Together, Grantaire finds them incandescent, though their golden-haired leader stands out by virtue of his bearing.

(Another moment which feels significant: one of Bahorel’s friends, a tall redhead with the same familiar, violent passion had greeted Enjolras and his _amis_ by saying: “Here you are, with your brothers-in-arms!”

And Enjolras had met Grantaire’s eyes over the redheaded man’s shoulders, and had replied: “I would not call them my brothers. I love them more dearly than even that.”

Grantaire had felt like he was burning, from the tips of his wild curly hair to the toes of his scuffed-up boots.)

The worst part is that Enjolras is sincere in everything, to everyone. This makes it difficult for Grantaire to feel special. _You are not special,_ some dim part of his mind will whisper. He will ignore it and focus instead on the leader.

Enjolras preaches like an ingrate and dresses with the precision of a well-raised child who cannot bear to do otherwise. Grantaire is accustomed to following the tails of Enjolras’s favorite coat, or the sight of his dark boots, cut low in the back and hitting just below his knees in the front. Enjolras’s one distinctive act of rebellion is the frequent disarray in which he leaves his cravat, which hangs around his neck like a failed noose and reveals the two gentle points of his collarbones. Everything else is painfully precise, from the buttons on his sleeves to the fit of his waistcoat. Grantaire does his best to occupy his thoughts with other subjects.

The subject of friendship, specifically, is on his mind often.

He thinks about Enjolras and his friends as well. Enjolras is quick to love Combeferre and Courfeyrac. Enjolras adores Feuilly. The blond is bursting with love for his friends, and also for his country. He proclaims his devotion to the latter frequently and noisily; he is subtler when it comes to extolling his appreciation of the former. Grantaire is only recently learning how to read between Enjolras’s stiff, polite manner of speaking.

He is meditating on these thoughts again, some weeks later, when Courfeyrac finds him after one of their hopeful meetings. He drops into the chair next to Grantaire like a child dropped from the sky, and his expression is as open and kind. “You concentrate so intensely upon your bottle that one can only assume you are trying to turn it back to water. But not I, I know our Grantaire better than that, so you must have something on your mind.”

Grantaire grins and tips the mouth of the bottle toward him in a lazy toast. “I think only of _fraternité,”_ he says grandly. “I’m sure Enjolras would be proud.”

“I’m sure he would.” Courfeyrac raises his eyebrows as though he has a secret. “The pair of you seem to be quibbling less often these days. I wonder if your new propensity for staring at bottles instead of draining them has a part to play.”

“I have been so raised in his esteem that he calls me his friend,” Grantaire corrects, quietly and warmly. “To bottle his words would make me master of the rarest vintage in France; as it stands, I am content to stay drunk on them alone.”

Courfeyrac’s answering grin is bright and quick. “Enjolras is slow to make friends,” he agrees. “Though I suspect he has considered you one for quite some time.”

“If that was the case, I almost ruined it the the Barriere du Maine.” Grantaire’s quicksilver smile almost falters at the memory: cheap dominoes; absinthe bitter on his tongue; Enjolras, leaning against the door with his mouth in a furious line. He wrests the memory away. “Though perhaps the aftermath is what has repaired his good opinion of me.”

Courfeyrac rests his sharp chin on one hand. “Do tell.”

“He had every intention of shouting at me, I am sure,” Grantaire says. He’s lying. Enjolras had shouted at him, with his hands fisted in Grantaire’s red waistcoat and his tone as cold as Grantaire had ever heard it. “But I was sick with wine and absinthe and he commanded I stay in his rooms so he could ensure I did not grow ill. In the morning we spoke, and all was mended.”

In the morning Grantaire had dragged himself painfully out of a wretched sleep to find Enjolras, already immaculately dressed, sitting in his wooden chair and watching him thoughtfully. The early sunlight was brilliant on his hair. Grantaire had looked at him warily. And Enjolras had asked him _why._

But Grantaire does not share the memory with Courfeyrac; it is his own to treasure. He merely shrugs. “We settled our differences and achieved a temporary peace.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Courfeyrac says, but his expression has gone wide in a way that does not bear well for Enjolras. “I like all of my friends to be in harmony.” His eyes have caught on something on the other side of the room, and he winks at whoever is meeting his gaze before excusing himself and moving away through the dimly-lit bar.

Grantaire begins idly carving on the edge of the wooden table with a penknife he keeps in his pocket. He had not thought that all was mended with Enjolras, initially. He had thought that nothing changed. If ever he deserved his companion’s scorn, it should have doubled after the halting and unintelligible explanation he had attempted to give in Enjolras’s rooms.

But Enjolras, of late, has been kind. It does not leave the bitter-brandy taste of pity in Grantaire’s throat, and he has no reason to doubt his friend’s sincerity, so he does not. Grantaire pulls himself out of his mellow thoughts and looks around the room to find it nearly empty in the aftermath of their meeting. Courfeyrac, smiling, is talking to Enjolras, frowning. Prouvaire still lingers over a map of Paris with a pensive expression. He is holding a packet of gunpowder.

Grantaire watches, and grows afraid. It is not long before he leaves the Musain and seeks to calm his restless nerves with some other man’s alcohol.

(“I have come with some friends of mine– Bahorel, Combeferre, _Grantaire.”)_

Enjolras’s regard for him stays at its new level, though there are still moments when he is sharp and disdainful. But Grantaire finds him to be newly remorseful as well, when his revolutionary fervor leads him to be unkind. Grantaire does not know how to react to this. He is wary of feeding the hope in his chest. Still, Enjolras keeps Grantaire’s name on the list of his closest companions.

Grantaire is drinking one evening, in the company of an old friend newly found and feeling immortal. “Mavot,” he insists at one point, “I have found myself among gods, who are shaping the world with their bare hands.”

Mavot tips his bottle in Grantaire’s direction. “To create the world anew is a popular idea these days,” he remarks. “I wouldn’t have chosen you as a follower of this new religion, though.” He claps Grantaire on the shoulder and stands up to fetch more wine for himself. Grantaire smiles into his glass and allows himself to think, for one glorious red moment, about what victory would taste like on his tongue and sound like from Enjolras’s mouth. He is broken from his reverie from an exclamation from across the bar.

“Come, come,” Mavot is saying, “It is the best of coincidences, I have someone you have to meet!” He is pulling Enjolras by the arm over to Grantaire’s table, but when Enjolras catches sight of the artist he only smiles.

“You promise new comrades in vain, Mavot,” Enjolras says chidingly. “Grantaire and I are already acquainted; he is a close friend of mine.”

Grantaire sits up straight and feels his face flush vintage red. “Enjolras.” He reaches one hand up and cannot help but grin when the blond clasps it in a friendly greeting. Mavot drops back into his seat.

“So this is one of your gods,” he accuses. “Paris grows smaller in the throes of change! I had no idea you two had met.”

“Like I said.” Enjolras’s blue eyes are darker in this light, and focused solely on Grantaire. “We are close friends.”

He does not stay to drink with Grantaire and Mavot, insisting that he has other business to attend to, but Grantaire feels the comfort of his presence even after he has left. He smiles more than he drinks. Mavot gives him up as a lost cause and leaves to join a familiar student across the bar who he claims is his friend. It is a dark night, a warm night, and Grantaire spins himself through his favorite circles of Paris with a smile on his face until the stars go to die in the arms of the dawn. He is happy, and Paris is wretchedly glorious for him because of it.

Several nights after that Grantaire is sitting up in his rooms with a single precious candle. He is paging absentmindedly through a book, drinking intermittently from a bottle, and gnawing determinedly on a piece of bread when someone pounds on his door. He gets up slowly, and peers out with as much caution as he is able.

It is a scruffy gamin, rocking back and forth on bare feet. Grantaire holds out the morsel of bread automatically and the child pockets it with a grin. “Kind of you. I’ve a message from a friend of yours.”

Grantaire rubs at the base of his neck. “Who could want me at this hour?”

The gamin shrugs. Grantaire isn’t actually sure if the child before him is a boy or a girl. “I didn’t get a name. He’s tall and blond, though, if that helps at all.”

Grantaire has to laugh. “I have only one friend who truly fits the description,” he replies. “Very well, what does Enjolras want with me?”

“He requests the pleasure of your company.” The gamin takes a skip back and sinks into a half-bow. “You’ve been cordially invited, all posh and such.”

“I sincerely doubt he said that.”

“Perhaps not.” The child straightens and grins again. “But he does want you, are you going to stand about and waste time?”

Grantaire grins at the gamin’s insolence and flips a coin into the dirty, waiting hand before shutting the door. It’s just as well that he hasn’t undone his cravat or taken off his waistcoat; he would never dare appear before Enjolras in any level of undress, for fear of reproach. He takes a moment to return his books to the shelf and blow out the lamp before setting out with a brown coat over his green waistcoat.

The walk to Enjolras’s rooms is not a long one, thought Grantaire has never ventured to follow this path at such a late hour.

He doesn’t know what excuse to give to Enjolras’s landlady, who peers at him suspiciously before waving him up the stairs with one wrinkled hand. He can hear her muttering as he climbs. He has not been back since that pivotal morning, when he had been weak and aching and Enjolras had shone.

Enjolras wrenches the door open before Grantaire can even knock twice, in such a state that Grantaire’s mouth falls open. Enjolras grabs his wrists impatiently and pulls him into the room before slamming the door behind him, a move which gives Grantaire the opportunity to catalogue every irregularity about Enjolras’s current mode.

He wears no waistcoat or cravat, only a white undershirt whose unbuttoned sleeves have been folded up to leave his forearms completely bare. His graceful feet are equally uncovered, and he wears a pair of breeches that end at his knees and condemn his calves and ankles to languish in the open air. Grantaire doesn’t know whether to laugh or avert his eyes. His open mouth quips without his permission: “Any other man would believe your intentions to be impure at this hour.”

It is a dangerous remark, but one whose implications do not seem to register on Enjolras’s face. He is leaning back familiarly against the wood door with his eyebrows raised and his arms crossed.

Grantaire tries to bite his tongue. It doesn’t work. “I’m shocked at your manner of dress; you look like an undone bourgeois.”

That gets a rise out of the blond. He huffs impatiently and reaches up to tug at his hair. “I spilled water on my trousers,” he admits. “When I went to find another pair I realized that I had quite forgotten to give my laundry to the landlady, and nothing was fit to be worn.” He frowns down at himself. “These are a relic from when I was younger. I fear they are too small.”

“On the contrary,” Grantaire dares to say. “They fit you quite well.”

Enjolras catalogues this comment with one slow blink of his eyes, but he does not address it. “I wanted to speak to you.”

“I am here. Speak.”

Enjolras uncrosses his arms and does not move for a moment. Then he crosses to one of the chairs and sits in it. Even in his gloriously indecent clothes he keeps an enviable posture and air of command. “I wanted to apologize for the cruel things I have said to you, in the past,” he states finally.

Grantaire is actually struck speechless for one entire moment, which is no mean feat. “This was important enough for you to summon me when you are in such a state of undress?”

“Undo your own cravat, if you feel so uncomfortable,” Enjolras says with his brow furrowed.

Grantaire passes one hand over his eyes. “That is not what I meant.”

“I could find something to put on, then.”

“And deny me the sight of your marble skin?” Grantaire finally takes off his coat and lays it over the back of another of Enjolras’s chairs. When he turns around once more he finds that the blond is eyeing him pensively. His face is slightly red. “Enjolras,” Grantaire sighs.

“Why will you not hear an apology?”

“I could almost count this among your cruelties. Why do you feel the need to apologize to me? I know how little you enjoy having me around.”

Enjolras stands up again and glares at him. “I thought you were done trying to deliberately antagonize me.”

“That isn’t my current intention! You call me your friend, and you must know what that means to me, my friends are the one thing I cannot live without. But I can think of so many instances where you have been harsh with me.”

“To love someone is not to accept their every move and remark without question!” Enjolras snaps back. Grantaire takes a step back in shock but the blond keeps going. “When you are drunk you are rude and contrary and it frustrates me. Should that be enough to keep you from being my friend? I am often cruel, and you know this. Does this lessen your regard of me?”

“Not at all.”

“You and I are not made to fit together with no rough edges between us,” Enjolras continues fiercely. “You are my friend, even when I do not want to speak to you.”

Grantaire’s thoughts have wrapped themselves in joy, but he is too contrary to keep from voicing his dissent. “Before now I have not though reconciliation to be a difficult force in my mind, but I am at a loss. You think there is no place for me in your fight, you have said so.”

“Not every man is fit for revolution,” Enjolras says as he balls his hands into fists. Grantaire thinks that in this state, barefoot and with his hair undone, Enjolras does not look fit for it either. “Combeferre is one. He detests blood, the sword, the pistol… And still he fights. I would spare him if he would let me.” He meets Grantaire’s gaze with his shoulders squared. “I’m asking you to let me.”

“Have you abandoned your ideals?” Grantaire demands, unable to keep a laugh from his wide mouth. “When has anything mattered but every man giving his all for the revolution?” Certainly it can’t have been him. To assume so is folly.

But Enjolras spins away from him to run his hands through his mussed hair. “Have I been so terrible to you that you believe me incapable of caring about my friends?” He asks unhappily. “I did not think that this would insult you.”

“I am not insulted,” Grantaire is quick to say. His heart is beating out a pulse like a thunderstorm. “But you… You have tried to send me away.”

Enjolras takes one tentative step forward and reaches for him. “I must be cruel only to be kind. If ever I attempt to send you away from me it is for your safety, do you understand?”

Grantaire presses his hand. “You would send me away, but not your other _amis?”_ He searches Enjolras’s blue eyes. “Not Combeferre, not Courfeyrac?”

The expression on Enjolras’s face is stern and sorrowful in the candlelight. In this, as in all other things, he is severe. “Combeferre and Courfeyrac are comrades and lieutenants beyond what I deserve,” he says, and there is no self-deprecation in his tone. “But I would not hesitate to say that you are my dearest friend.”

There is a long moment of silence. Grantaire, wide-eyed, sinks into one of Enjolras’s hard wooden chairs. “I am better, by you,” he says quietly. “I can catch my tongue and believe. I feel that I become someone.” He swallows. “So I would not have you send me away.”

Enjolras stares at him. He is once more as solemn and upright as a priest, even in his bare feet. “I ask this out of care for you,” he says slowly. “What else can I do to make it plain how much I care for you?”

Grantaire feels as though his body has been wrought anew. To be valued by Enjolras, to be held in high esteem by him, is startling and sobering and incandescently pleasing. His voice is soft. “If you care for me then let me stay.”

There is no response. Enjolras and Grantaire eye each other warily in the guttering candlelight.

“Please,” Grantaire adds quietly.

The blond drops his eyes. “I am harsh, when it comes to my country. I will hurt you.”

“Care for me beneath your frigid exterior and I will gladly bear it,” Grantaire says as he stands up from his chair. “You will make a temperamental friend, and that suits me well.” He takes a step toward Enjolras. Another. The blond doesn’t pull away as Grantaire takes his hand, lifts it to his mouth, and presses a light kiss to the center of Enjolras’s palm. 

Enjolras’s eyes are as wide as Grantaire has ever seen them, and the rest of his face, though composed, is slightly red. Grantaire gives him a small smile and steps back.

“I must be on my way,” he says quietly. “I know you speak tomorrow, before Lamarque’s house. I will see you there.”

The room is silent as he gathers his coat and pulls it around his shoulders. He doesn’t look back at Enjolras as he goes to the door, turns the knob, and pushes his way out once more.

His heart is beating furiously in his chest as he descends the stairs, as though he has just confronted a lion. Grantaire tips a hand at the landlady and gets a scowl for good measure; when his feet touch the cobblestones he starts to make his way home with his hands in his coat pockets and a grin on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't experienced the wonderful art of weisbrot, go [check out their tumblr!](http://weisbrot.tumblr.com)
> 
> I can be found on tumblr as [kvothes.](http://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x/) I also having a writing inspiration sideblog at [sweetprincet.](http://sweetprincet.tumblr.com/tagged/x)
> 
> Enjolras quotes Hamlet where he says “I must be cruel only to be kind,” a snippet I decided to include because I found out that Victor Hugo wrote an entire essay about Shakespeare and other writers that was considered to be a ‘critical failure.’
> 
> Pretot and Mavot are my darlings who are mentioned exactly one time in the brick.
> 
> First time writing canon era, be kind to me.


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